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Friday, May 28, 2010

Praxis: Advice to counterinsurgents -- "Travel light."

Shemagh.

From Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen, Chapter One, "Twenty-eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company Level Counterinsurgency."

5. Travel light and harden your Combat Service Support. You will be weighed down with body armor, rations, extra ammunition, communications gear, and a thousand other things. The enemy will carry a rifle or RPG, a shemagh, and a water bottle if he is lucky. Unless you ruthlessly lighten your load and enforce a culture of speed and mobility, the insurgents will consistently outrun and out maneuver you. But in lightening your load, make sure you can always "reach back" to call for firepower or heavy support if needed. Also, remember to harden your CSS. The enemy will attack your weakest points. Most attacks on Coalition forces in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, outside preplanned combat actions like the two battles of Fallujah or Operation Iron Horse, were against CSS installations and convoys. You do the math. Ensure that your CSS assets are hardened, have communications, and are trained in combat operations. They may do more fighting than your rifle squads.

It is sad to say, but the U.S. military learned very little from Viet Nam. The parallels are too obvious to ignore; our heavy, slow troops dominate where ever they go but the enemy is able to disengage at will and so cannot be completely destroyed, the local government is too corrupt and incompetent to govern and the insurgents supply what amounts to local government giving them legitimacy. We are now going to launch a major offensive against Kandahar. We will undoubtedly win this offensive as we did with all major offensives in Viet Nam. But if, after 9 years of war, the Taliban still dominates the second largest city in Afghanistan, the war is lost.

One trick the Taliban use in Afghanistan is to carry 3 magazines and their rifle-that's it. The key for them to sustain combat is to have dozens of mini caches where there are extra ammo, food, water. This works for them as they are essentially waging a defensive war in total depth of their rugged country.

In America you plant mini caches everywhere you think you will be fighting, which should be everywhere as we are defending our country. Stock the cache with several "standard" calibers as who knows what will be used.

7.62 NATO5.56 7.62x397.62x54r30.0630.308mm mauser

Again this will have to be something of a mini ammo buffet as there's really no standard issue with us. All the 6.8 and 6.5 Grendel shooters... well what can I say?

The Militia Act of 1792 provided an interesting and not-bad starting equipment list, if updated for today:

"That every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear, so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise, or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack."

For constant carry I like the water bottle with filter straw in it, a first aid kit with quick-clot, a multi-tool, and most definitely a shemagh. That is the single most useful piece of gear I own, because it is a sunshade, sniper veil, washcloth, towel, bandage, water filter, and face mask. It is extremely effective as a psychological warfare tool, because it gives the wearer an air of menacing mystery.One secret of the guerrilla insurgent is that he can cache his supplies all over the place and especially in strategic spots where there are already preset ambush positions, so that when he hits the enemy and they chase him, they run straight into boobytrapped kill zone and he is quickly resupplied and on his way before they have a chance to regroup.

I'm glad you brought this up, Mike. As far as I'm concerned, loadout and weight are the two most vital aspects of successful insurgency.

In the Chechen Wars guerrillas were consistently able to outmaneuver overloaded Russian troops. Speed is Armor was the Chechen philosophy, and it is mine as well. Headgear, tactical vest, Camelback, and rifle. That's all you need. Unless you can afford ultra lightweight stuff like Dragonskin, body armor is out.

When I was a soldier I remember being weighed down by a bunch of mandatory (superfluous) gear. Never again. Run light, run silent.

In a bit of shameless self-promotion, I'll recommend my new book, RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY. It's a primer on armed resistance. Available from Amazon. It covers not only shooting but things like organization, encrypted communications, intelligence gathering, and logistics.

The problem I see wearing a shemagh in this country is--you will probably be seen as a terrorist and engaged. The psychological advantage? None IMHO. Would hate to be identified as an insurgent because of that. Just my .02 and I could be wrong.

In addition to traveling light, know WHERE to travel. Saving weight allows for a lot of things, among them being your distance to failure - if need be. You can only go so far, no matter how efficiently equipped.

I hope y'all think about where you go first, as wasting time and energy headed the wrong way, or moving when you needn't, is foolish.

We must all acquire clothing which will make us look like one of the enemy's own. You know. T-Shirts with Che Quevara, OBAMA Rocks, Democrats are kool and so forth on them and the like.

I don't think this war will be fought in "traditional" tactics. It will be more hit and run tactics and "undercover" operations.

I really like the tactics used in the book, "Unintended Consequences". It allows for specifically punishing those who are the offenders of liberty and minimizes, if not, eliminates collateral damage to innocents.

As additional fodder, many experts say Snipers are the ultimate battlefield weapon. Imagine a half-million sniper teams roaming the country made up of guys who routinely shoot prairie dogs and coyotes etc. at long ranges.

I will NOT be wearing any king of clothing which could be considered "insurgent" type.

We should all look just like the everyday citizen on the street so once we hit them we can immediately disappear into the general population.

We have a crafty friend who could MAKE some of these bandoleers if I could find a pattern for her. I always try to remember the maxim: If you want a hole in the wall to hang a picture, you don't have to buy a drill. Recall what you want: a hole in the wall. I.e., you don't have to buy the gear; sometimes you can make it. I'm asking her this month once I find a pattern online (or reverse-engineer a U.S. Army bandonleer).

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.